(A paraphrase, Spring 2007) Dr. Green: In his reflections on Mozart, Karl Barth articulated some things about experiencing music that I have strongly noted over the years myself. Barth was in an ideal position to articulate these particular ideas as he was a person who read deeply in theology and also experienced worship richly. Thus, he was able to put the mental and experiential parts together as he framed his ideas.
What Barth expressed that resonates deeply with my experience begins with the idea that the experience of music can be extremely worshipful for the person of faith, even in the absence of words. There may be no need for words as part of the musical experience to order the thoughts of a reverent person whose heart is already directed to the Lord, just as prayer without words might sometimes express our deepest longings and most intimate communion with God.
This sort of worshipful, musical experience also need not happen within the walls of a church or the confines of a worship service. At times, music seems to create its own church around it, transforming our location into a holy place of encounter with the Lord. At such times, music gives us the same sense that Moses had on the mountainside when he had to remove his shoes as he came to understand he was standing on holy ground.
To restate all that I have said so far in different terms, a person of faith who reads the story of the Bible and meditates on the grandeur of God may be predisposed by those activities to experiences of Christian worship when experiencing good music. This music does not have to be explicitly theological. A Christian text is not required nor is it necessary for the composer to have intended to glorify Christ through his or her composition. This music is good in that it touches the soul and reveals transcendence.
These sorts of experiences lead me to ponder if a spirituality without music could be complete. Music can convey heaven coming down to earth. Perhaps musicians view their work as pulling earth up to heaven. When I listen to the music of the great composers, it causes me to wonder what they knew about God that I haven’t learned. One wonders at the sheer genius and expression of these composers and their gifts to conceive and organize the possibilities of the orchestra. It seems that the role of music in the development of personal spirituality has probably been overlooked many times. An important endeavor in this area could involve a very intentional exploration and selection of works of the great composers somehow organized in conjunction with scripture.
Again I emphasize that if our approach to spirituality is only verbal and historical; we are missing part of the spiritual.
Now to start hearing these qualities of excellence and revelation of transcendence in music, one may need to listen for a while. We might begin to understand composition as part of the ongoing act of Creation. We might also learn to see Creation as being more fully related to fellowship between God and humanity.
In physics, they're always talking about a "unified theory," something that would explain how everything interacts and works together. You have to account for some basics in a unified theory: matter, gravity, light, electromagnetism, and other things. I'm almost totally ignorant about this, so I couldn't say for sure what the basic framework is and what a "unified" theory attempts to explain.
Anyway, I think that, in terms of spirituality, metaphysics or religion, any "unified theory" must include music as a fundamental element and attempt to explain its interactions with other basic elements (prayer/worship, reason/intellect, sensory perception and other things we might name).
I find this concept helpful because I'm sort of like the physicists - I'm absolutely convinced that music is a fundamental element in human experience and behavior, but not sure how to describe its interactions with other fundamental elements. It's just that I think any quest for truth which ignores music is probably going to be flawed or incomplete. I'm not saying music is the key to human experience - but no one can discover such a key without employing music as a research tool.
Charles Hulin: I’ve thought a lot about how music speaks to us of God. In that composers and other musicians are crafting their work by organizing materials that God created (sound, the laws of physics, human nature and perception), I believe it can speak to us of God just as the beauties of nature do. The talents of the artists are themselves part of the glory of God’s creation.
We can add to this that classical music is a reflection of the culture which gave rise to it, and that culture was profoundly shaped by Christian thought, among other things. The very structure of classical works is permeated by resonances with Christianity. The basic forms of classical music compose out basics of Christian philosophy. For instance, themes and variations assert a sense of individual identity that is indestructible over the life of a piece. This parallels the fundamental Christian concept of personhood. Sonata form revolves around the successful resolution of conflict which is an idea that is articulated at many levels of the Christian worldview. The great number of works in joyful major keys and the tendency of minor-key works to give way to the major mode suggest the hopeful expectations of believers. Tonality itself mirrors a realm that is harmoniously organized around a single authority.
The most general organizations of music in the West suggest a Trinitarian arrangement. The unity of the orchestra is made up of instruments that produce sound in three ways – air, friction, percussion. We tend to think of registers in terms of high, middle, and low and even the most complicated musical textures rarely consist of more than three truly independent constituents. Our harmonic system recognizes three basic functions of chords, each one pointing toward the final tonic, much as the Spirit and Christ are described as ultimately bear witness to the Father.
Beyond the tonal pail we find music that always sounds fresh because it plays against some deeply rooted expectations. In some small way, this energetic modern music shares in the classic characteristic of God’s creativity in that is somehow new every day.
Finally, there is a mysterious factor that defies our analysis. I think there are moments when music touches us in ways that don’t seem to relate to the body or the mind. There seems to be no clue as to how the effectiveness of music is achieved at such times. I believe our spirits are being addressed in these experiences and as these experiences defy analysis, we can’t begin to discern whether this spiritual speaking is inherent in the music or if it is a matter of God’s choosing to speak to us at those particular times. Whatever the nature of these experiences, I believe they come to us to help us and we can trust that anything that is good is from God.